Hollywood Babylon S2 Ep19
by Bad Day at Black Rock
Summary: A mysterious death on the set of a crappy horror movie lead them to dig into the studio's past.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: These fics are based on real episodes from Supernatural. The characters and plots belong to the creator and writers for the show. If you want background on the new character you can read the previous episodes.

Hollywood Babylon

Sam had been unapproachable since Madison, to say the least. He had become so detached and quiet lately. Without even discussing it, Dean and Kayla had drastically reduced their PDA in front of him; it just didn't seem fair after what he had to go through. He did perk up a little when they found out about a mysterious death during the filming of a movie. Guess he was more like Dean than he thought.

The quickest way into the movie studio was to take the tour. Dean seemed really excited about the whole thing and the possibility of running into somebody famous. He could be such a tourist sometimes. As the golf cart slowed to let a group of people pass, Sam motioned off to a corner.

"Let go guys."

"I want to finish the tour." Dean complained. Off his look he grimaced and started to get up anyway, Kayla pat his hand.

"You can finish the tour and catch up with us. I'll go with Sam."

"Yeah?" He liked this. "Alright, call me."

They headed through the lot, trying to look like they belonged there. "So is there anything weird about the death, besides the whole, murder on the set of a horror movie thing?"

Sam shrugged. "Well the girl who found the body, Tara Benchley, said she saw a vanishing figure."

"Super." They found the studio number they were looking for and ducked into the set. There were a lot of people milling around, one man in particular seemed like he was someone important to the movie. He was arguing with two of the crew.

"Um…" the guy turned around, Sam was the first person he saw. "You. Get me a smoothie."

Sam jumped right into it. "Flavor preference?"

"Piña Colada."

He turned back towards the door, Kayla followed close behind. She had seen a vendor on the lot.

Sam opened the door for her. "Close to here?"

She paused. "Close to here…what?"

"You just said you saw a vendor on the lot."

Really? She definitely should have gotten more sleep last night. "I saw one, right around that corner." She motioned.

They got the smoothie and quickly brought it back to the guy, and just like that, Sam was a PA. Kayla stayed out of direct view in case they needed to split off.

After a quick tour through the set they came up empty handed on the EMF readings. However they did come across Dean, who was standing by the lunch table. Big surprise there. He grinned when he saw them.

"Hey guys! Guess what? I'm a PA!"

"Yeah me too." Sam watched him stuff another burger into his mouth. "You found anything?"

"Besides that being a PA sucks? No, but the food is awesome. Check out these mini Philly cheese steaks."

He shook his head. "Right. Anyway, I did find some background on the studio itself. Four people have died in the last eight years; two suicides, two fatal accidents."

"Any one of those could be a vengeful spirit."

"Yeah, we just gotta narrow it down more."

Dean swallowed his bite and glanced behind them. _Holy crap._ He snapped to look at Kayla. "Can I talk to her?"

Confused, she turned to see the brunette walking onto set. "Are you asking my permission?"

"She's famous. Well, not famous famous but I mean she's the star of the movie and…"

"Yeah, Dean…that's fine."

They watched him walk towards her, snatching a script from someone on the way. Sam turned to Kayla. "You don't care?"

"Let's put it this way." Kayla motioned to them, already in the midst of conversation. "She's an actress that he has a crush on, and if we were on the set of a Hugh Jackman movie, I wouldn't be asking permission."

He laughed and nodded slightly. "Ok."


	2. Chapter 2

The effort put into Dean's "information gathering" did prove a little helpful; she had taken a picture of the crew member that was killed. Dean recognized him as an actor, more of a D list player, did a lot of extras parts in movies. Anyway, the guy was still around. He told them the murder was staged by the director and producer to raise a media hype around the movie. Even the "vanishing figure" Tera saw was faked with a projector. Just so the trip wasn't a wasted one, they decided to look into the previous deaths and the rumors on the haunted set.

The next day on set, the three were sporadically placed to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Whoever the guy was who wanted the smoothie the day before had killed himself before they got there, hung himself on set; so far it seemed that staying was a good idea. They really enjoyed the conversation about how it was stupid to think ghosts would be afraid of salt. Kayla wondered who the original writer was; he did some good research. She glanced to her left and saw Dean, munching away on some dessert left for the cast and crew while taking periodically into his headset. To her right was Sam with that same distant look, he didn't really seem to be watching for anything.

She walked over to him and nudged him to get his attention. "Dean's really into this whole PA thing huh?"

"Hmm?" He glanced over to Dean and barely smiled. "Yeah, it's kind of funny."

"How're you holding up Sam?"

"Me? I'm fine."

"Really?"

He glanced to her then back to the set. "I really don't want to talk about it. Please."

"You can't pretend like it didn't happen."

"Why? You do." He saw the look on her face. "I'm sorry. I just, I don't even want to think about it right now."

"Ok, you know you can talk to me though."

"I know." He motioned over to Dean and she followed him over. "How's it going?"

He nodded. "It's going great, Tera has really stepped up her performance."

Kayla laughed. "I think he's referring to the case."

"Right."

"Anyway, I got into the morgue. The newspapers were right…"

Dean spoke into his headset. "Copy that." He flipped the mouthpiece down. "What was that?"

His brother was retarded. "I was saying the newspapers were right. Brad's a doornail, he…"

Dean pulled the mouthpiece down again. "They are aware!"

"Who's aware?"

He moved it again. "What'd you say?"

"Brad's dead." Kayla said quickly, and loudly, so he would focus.

"Well it's a good thing we didn't skip town then isn't it." He paused to listen. "10-4. I'll be right there. Guys, I want you to hear something."

One of the techs played them the sound recording from the scene earlier, right before Brad hung himself. There was some kind of feedback, a strange voice coming through over the actors. Looked like this was a real haunting after all.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean managed to get a copy of the footage taken when Brad hung himself and they found the nearest trailer to play it back in. As the video was playing, Sam pointed to the screen.

"Go back."

Dean rewound the tape.

"Right after that…right…pause!"

They sat quietly for a second, looking at the woman standing in the corner of the scene. She was wearing a white dress, and definitely wasn't one of the cast or crew.

"It's like Three Men and a Baby all over again." They looked at Dean. "There's a scene in the movie where people say the camera caught a ghost on film. Apparently in the background of one of the scenes there was this boy that no one remembers from the sets, spirit photography."

Sam tilted his head. "I've seen her before. Let me grab my research from the car, I'll meet you back on set." He left the trailed.

Dean smirked. "You wanna make out?"

She laughed. 'Time and place."

He grinned in response. "Come on."

They met Sam back on the set and he pulled out a photocopy of an old newspaper clipping. "This is…"

"Go for Ozzy." Dean spoke into his headset again, getting a look of satisfaction as he answered the call. "No I don't have a 20 on Tera I think she's 10-100. Ok copy that." He looked back at Sam. "I'm sorry what were you saying?"

Sam knew Kayla thought it was adorable, but he didn't. In fact, he was done dealing with Dean right now. He moved the article in front of Kayla.

"Elise Drummond. Starlet back in the 30's, had a thing with the studio exec. He used her, fires her, left her destitute, she killed herself on set. Hung herself right into one of the scenes during filming, just like Redding."

Kayla looked less than thrilled. "We're digging up a body tonight aren't we?"


	4. Chapter 4

The laboring task of digging up a body didn't help much, the producer of the movie was found dead the following morning on set. It was labeled a freak accident; he was chopped up by a huge fan, blood and guts everywhere-gross. The death was the same as one of the others they'd researched on the studio's history. It would seem to be another ghost, but the problem was that the man who was killed back then had been cremated. No body to dig up. The director came in and quickly shut down production for a few days to cooperate with police.

Kayla stared at the crowd as they dispersed. "Now what?"

"I don't know." Sam responded. "Let's go back to the trailer, check the tapes again."

They went back and sat around the TV. After about the sixth hour of dailies, everyone was bored out of their minds and pretty much hated the movie.

"Maybe the sprits are trying to stop the making of the movie because it sucks, because, well, it kind of does." Sam noted.

Kayla nodded. "At this point, I'd believe it."

The next scene came on and showed Tera reading from a book, trying her hand at Latin.

"She sure butchered that incantation didn't she?"

Sam looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"Well that's what it is, right? It sounds like one of the incantations in your research books."

He rewound the tape and played it back, now listening carefully to the words she was speaking. "It's an invocation, an um, it's a summoning ritual actually. What's that doing in a Hollywood movie?"

"Maybe we should talk to the writer. I never saw him leave." Dean suggested.

"Yeah, find out why he's trying to bring the spirits out to play."

Kayla stood and stretched, damn they'd been watching TV awhile. "I'll talk to him, I think I'm his type."

"You're too smart to be his type."

"I'll dumb it down." She left the trailer and jogged back into the studio, thankful for something to do.

It didn't take long to find the writer. He was in his new office, a woman was already scraping the name of the producer off the door. She stopped in the doorway and smiled a little as he looked at her.

He paused his conversation in his cell phone. "I…let me call you back." The phone snapped shut and he cocked his head. "Things are shut down for the day…is there something I can help you with?"

"No, I just," she smiled sheepishly. "You're the writer, right? I read the script."

You could almost see his ego inflate. "Yeah? What'd you think?"

"It was really great."

"It was totally rockin' right?" He was grinning ear to ear now and she tried not to roll her eyes.

"Yeah and I mean, like, really detailed. There was just one thing that I didn't really get. The whole, Latin reading stuff…"

This seemed to make him even more excited, if that was possible. "Sweetheart, I am totally with you on that. That crap was from the original writer, Walter Dixon."

"Well he's kind of crazy then, I mean, how would spirits hear chanting from hell anyway?"

"Exactly! Man, you should have seen the script before I fixed it. I had to do so much work, just to keep it readable!"

"You did a great job."

"Thanks." He paused and she saw him shift, he was going for the kill. "Haven't I seen you around here?"

"I'm a PA."

"Ah no, sweetheart, you can do better than that." He smirked. "You're really into the whole movie thing huh?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"Tell you what." He handed her a script. "This is the original script. Why don't you read it over, for comparison. Then we can talk about it…say…over dinner?"

She smiled, like she had suddenly gotten what she wanted. "That'd be awesome."

He smirked. He probably thought he was one slick pup. "Great. Meet you here tonight…seven?"

"Sure. I'm um…I'm Kayla by the way." _Since you asked me out without knowing my name._

"See you tonight Kayla."

She brought the script back to the trailer and tossed it onto the table. "The invocation was written by the original screenplay writer, Walter Dixon. This was his original script, happy reading…"

"Yeah Sam get on that." Dean turned the tape off and turned on actual television.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam found the original script much better than the edited version. It was also basically a how-to manual for invoking the dead and making them do whatever you want, like killing people. The only thing he couldn't figure out was why this writer would want this out in the public. After a brief debate, they figured he was punishing the crew for butchering his script and the guy who rewrote it-Martin, was most likely the next on the list.

They went back to the set after dark and found what they expected to find; Walter Dixon letting a ghost try to kill the writer. Before he could be dragged into the fan, Dean shot the spirit with rock salt.

He looked at him gratefully. "You are one hell of a PA."

"I know." Dean helped him up off the ground.

"What are you doing?" Walter ran up the stairs.

Sam looked after him. "We could ask you the same thing. Raising these spirits from the bed, making them murder for you? That's playing with fire Walter!"

"You don't understand!" He kept climbing the stairs, obviously not wanting a face to face with them.

Kayla looked up at him. "So explain it to us."

"You put your heart and soul into something, years of hard work, and they take it and crap all over it!" He yelled. "Look, I don't have beef with you guys, please just leave. Martin has to stay."

"Sorry, we can't do that." Dean shrugged. "It's not that we like the guy, it's just the principle."

"Then I'm sorry too." He held his talisman up and started chanting in Latin. Three ghosts appeared and walked towards them. Before they could even arm themselves the ghosts disappeared and attacked them.

Kayla saw the guys going for the set house, she looked to the stairs. "I'm going after Walter."

Dean started to argue, but he quickly weighed the odds; Walter was probably less of a fight than the three ghosts. "Yell if you need anything."

She quickly scaled the stairs and chased through a door to a cement platform. "Walter!"

He stopped and turned towards her.

"This has to stop."

"Here!" He chucked the talisman.

"No don't!" She tried to grab it; she dove but couldn't get to it in time-Kayla winced as it shattered on the ground. "Why'd you have to do that?"

"Now no one can have it."

"Yeah but…" she shook her head and glanced around. "I thought you did your research on this." They both turned and saw Dean, Sam and Martin come through the door. "Now the ghosts are free…and they're gonna be major league pissed at you."

"Did he break it?" Dean asked. "Are you stupid?"

Walter jerked from the unseen attacker. Just as quickly, he was on the ground and blood started seeping through his shirt. Martin lifted his cell phone to see the ghosts attacking; no one else wanted to look.

The following day on set, Martin had taken his new knowledge of the afterlife and applied it the only way he knew; put it into the movie. Now the actors were shooting at images of ghosts in their cell phones. Oh well. At the end of the day, they did what they were supposed to do. They stopped the bad guy. Too bad he couldn't just learn his lesson instead of being murdered.


End file.
